female speaker: all right. hi, everyone. so a little bit about maria. she is a brand strategist,author and speaker, who believes cash flow andcreativity are not mutually exclusive. as brand chief strategist andcreator of red slice, she advises start-ups, solopreneurs,and small- to mid-sized growth companieson how to craft
irresistible brands. maria is the author of twobooks, "branding basics for small business," and, whatwe're going to look into today, her humorous andheartfelt memoir "rebooting my brain." so maria's been alsofeatured on msnbc, abc news, npr, "entrepreneur,"and the "la times." we often don't get to hear a lotabout severe brain trauma patients, because, sadly, theydon't always have the means or cognitive ability to communicatetheir experience.
maria has had an amazingrecovery from a ruptured brain aneurysm just overfour years ago. she now uses her voice toeducate and inspire others about both the unseen effectsof brain injury, as well as how to bounce back afterany crisis yanks you out of your life. so please, let me welcome, andjoin me to welcome maria ross. thank you. maria ross: thanks forhaving me today.
i really appreciate it. so yeah, as rachel said,my name is maria ross. and i want to talk toyou a little bit. my mission is two-fold intalking to you today. number one is to educate you alittle bit about brain injury and brain aneurysms,in particular. as we all know from all thequarterbacks that got concussions this past weekendin the nfl, brain injury is finally getting inthe spotlight.
and so more people need tounderstand some of the unseen effects that go along with it,because too often, people try to diagnose it as, oh,they look fine. and so i'm really on a missionto educate people about what brain injury patients, no matterhow they got their brain injury-- whether it'sconcussion, or, like me, an aneurysm, or a stroke or someother traumatic event-- many of the effectsare the same. so i'm on a mission to educateas well as inspire people,
because my story, where i wasin my life, is probably very similar to where you guys are. and when life yanks you out ofit because of a crisis, it can really can make youlose your balance. and so it's all about howdo you get back into the slipstream of your life andrebuild, hopefully, a little bit wiser and a little bitchanged by the experience. so let me paint a picture foryou of what was going on when this whole aneurysm hit mylife and the life of my
husband, paul. in 2007, we had been living inthe san francisco bay area-- and i had been here foralmost eight years-- both living similar lives towhat you guys are living. we were both marketingprofessionals, marketing executives in technology,working down in the valley, living up in san francisco. so commuting, really fast-pacedlifestyle, really doing a lot and tryingto fit a lot in.
my husband got a job offerfrom microsoft. so we ended up moving to seattlebecause of that. and you can imagine thatthat was a huge change. not only did we move toa new city, but we had to make new friends. we bought our first house. we adopted our first dog. and as if that wasn't enoughchange and stress, after my company that i was working forin the valley had some
layoffs, i decided to hang outmy own shingle and start my brand consultancy, which i'dwanted to for a long time. so i was getting into the swingof owning a new business and all the legal requirementsand the accounting requirements and networking andtrying to build up that base of clients. so it was a really crazy andstressful time for us. and we were going at, probably,about 300 miles an hour, as i'm sure many ofour lives feel like in
this day and age. in addition to all ofthat-- as if, again, that all wasn't enough-- i'm also an actressin my spare time. so i was investigating theseattle theater scene as well, thinking i'm not sure how i wasgoing to have time to do another play on topof all of this. so it was a pretty crazy time. and after an initial episode--
which maybe we can talk aboutin the q&a if you want-- i started having some prettydebilitating migraines on a regular basis, to the pointthat i was vomiting. i couldn't go into work. and there was one particularepisode that stopped me in my tracks. and when i went to the doctor,he thought it was just all the stress and change that wasgoing on in our lives. and my blood pressurewas through the roof
when he took it. but there's high blood pressurein my family, so we really weren't surprised thatall the stress and change had caused the high bloodpressure. so fast forward about a monthand a half of the occasional dealing with these headaches,monitoring my blood pressure. he said to monitor it for amonth and, if it wasn't going down, to come back in. i was about to get ready to makethat call to go back in
to see him. but on august 4, 2008, icollapsed, unconscious, on my bathroom floor. and luckily, my husband decidedto leave work early that day and come home andwork from home, because i wasn't feeling well. so had he not beenthere, i probably wouldn't be here today. but he immediately called 911.
and we also were very fortunateenough to live about five miles from the region'stop trauma center that attracts some of the topneurosurgeons in the country. so that was another stroke ofluck or destiny that was on my side that day. and when they rushed me tothe er, unconscious and unresponsive, they did anemergency scan and found that an aneurysm had ruptured, andit was causing a hemorrhage. so before we go any further, ijust want to clarify a few
definitions. how many of you know whatan aneurysm is? anyone? yeah. i didn't know whatit was either. so i always thought an aneurysmwas an event, like a heart attack, like someonehas an aneurysm. but an aneurysm isactually a thing. it's a ballooning of a weak spotin your artery wall or
your blood vessel. and it can either get so bigthat it causes problems. or, like in my case, it canrupture, because of all the pressure of your blood pumpingthrough the vessel as it gets bigger and bigger and bigger,until, like a balloon, it actually pops. so i wanted to read somestatistics to you about brain aneurysm, because a lotof people don't know a lot about it.
an estimated 6 million peoplein the us have an unruptured aneurysm but don't know it. that's about 1 in 50 people. so you can actually have ananeurysm and live your life and be fine. and it may never causeyou any problems. in fact, i actually haveanother aneurysm that's really small. but because of what happened tome, it's being monitored by
the doctors. the rate of rupture isapproximately 8 per 100,000 people, or 25,000 people. and about 40% of all peoplewho have ruptured brain aneurysm will die as a result. four out of seven people whoactually survive will have disabilities. and shockingly enough, themost prevalence of brain aneurysms is in people betweenthe ages of 35 and 60.
so i had my aneurysm burstwhen i was 35. and everyone thought,oh, that's so young. but it's actually right in thebeginning of that sweet spot. and for some reason that sciencehasn't quite figured out yet, women suffer more thanmen from brain aneurysms, at a ratio of aboutthree to two. and brain aneurysm rupturesare 3% to 5% of all new strokes. so it's pretty compelling,when you look at the
statistics, that someone,somewhere may be touched in their lives, either themselvesor someone close to them, by a ruptured brain aneurysm. and i've heard so many storiesfrom emails, since i've gotten the book, about all differentkinds of scenarios, where people discovered their aneurysmor had it rupture and didn't know or had misdiagnosisupon misdiagnosis from doctors. so a lot of the nonprofit groupsthat are out there
really seek to not just educatethe public but educate primary care physicians. because many of themdon't-- like mine-- know that those are thecommon symptoms of an unruptured aneurysm. so back to the er, they alsodiscovered that when i had this ruptured aneurysm-- obviously, when it ruptures,it causes a cerebral hemorrhage.
and that's really wherethe danger is. in my case, the specifichemorrhage that i had was called a subarachnoidhemorrhage. and it doesn't have anythingto do with spiders. but as one doctor explained tome in a great way, he said, it's really just not yourbrain and your skull. there's a bunch of layers thatprotect your brain, sort of like saran wrap, that youdon't really know the technical terms for.
and between two of those layersis a space called the subarachnoid space. and what makes that hemorrhagereally dangerous is that it's not localized. so once it gets into thesubarachnoid space, it actually surrounds thecircumference of your brain and causes pressure, whichis what is really deadly in most cases. the subarachnoid hemorrhageis about 1% to
7% of all new strokes. and the statistics around thatis about 50% of the people who have those don't survive. about 10% to 15% of themnever even make it to the hospital in time. and of those that survive, theyoften have neurological or cognitive impairments. so it was pretty nasty. and i'm very blessedand very lucky.
and i've actually surprised manyof my neurosurgeons with my recovery, because i reallybeat the statistics with what's happening to me. but to get back to the story,so i was in the hospital, in summary, around sixweeks, total. i was in the icu for about threeor four weeks, between icu and the neurosurgery ward. what they did was,initially, they have to stop the bleeding.
that's the imperative the daythat i was brought in. and there's two ways tostop an aneurysm. one way is clipping, which is,literally, you go in and you surgically almost, like,put a clothespin and close off the aneurysm. the other way, depending onwhere it's located and how big it is, is to do a coiling,which is what they did with me. they did it an emergency coilingprocedure, which is
pretty crazy. so they go through an arteryin your thigh. and they put a catheterthat goes all the way up to your brain. and they thread platinumwires, one by one, and basically create a knitted ballto block the flow of the blood in the aneurysm. so it's basically like i havea plug that's stopping the flow of the blood fromthe aneurysm.
so that kind of blows my mind. pardon the pun. so that's what theydid with me. and then, as a result, i had acouple of other setbacks while i was in icu and neurosurgery. i had what's calledan angioplasty. because a common side effectfrom brain trauma is, a few days later, like clockwork, whathappens is your brain is trying to protect itselffrom the trauma.
so some of your blood vesselssnap shut without warning. and that can cause stroke-likesymptoms. so for me, it was a degradationof my left side, just about the third or fourthday that i was in icu. and they realized i neededan angioplasty. and that's just, basically, whenthey go in with a balloon and pump up and prop up theblood vessel again so that it's not snapped shut anymore. i also had an issue with anincrease of intracranial
fluid, or icf, which, again, iscommon with brain trauma. what happens is our bodiesall produce icf on a regular basis. and in a normal, healthy body,it's absorbed back into the bloodstream in a routine way. but when you have a braintrauma, sometimes the body can't absorb the fluid as fastas it's being produced. and so it causes excess pressureon your brain. so they did several spinal tapson me, but it's still
wasn't alleviatingthe pressure. so i had to get a shuntimplanted in my skull, which is still there. and that's just sort of like arelease valve, that when the fluid built up too high, itwould release the fluid. there's actually a tube thatgoes down the back of my ear and down my chest intomy abdominal area. now, it's probably not workingnow, because this was over four years ago.
but it's too invasive to goback in and remove it. so i just sort of have thisshunt in my head for the rest of my life. and then in addition, i did acouple weeks of inpatient therapy while i was in thehospital, because i also forgot to mention, i was blindthe entire time that i was in the hospital. i had what's called terson'ssyndrome, which is a side effect of a subarachnoidhemorrhage, because the hits
just keep on going. and it basically caused anotherhemorrhage in my retinas that impairedmy vision. so i had no short-term memory. i was on icu drugs and totallyconfused and rambling and making up stories andconspiracy theories. and then, on top of that,i couldn't see. so that was my experiencein the hospital. i got released.
and then a week later, the eyedoctors did a surgery on one of my eyes, to at leastclear the vision so that i could rehab. but they don't like to do that,because they don't like mucking in your eye ifthey don't have to. so they let the other eye healon its own, which took about 9 or 10 months for it tocompletely clear out to the point that i coulddrive again. and then, when i got home, icontinued therapies, physical,
occupational, and speech. and speech was not because ihad speech problems, but speech covers all the cognitiveissues that you have-- so memory, organization,comprehension, vocabulary recall. i was not speaking as fast asi'm speaking right now. i couldn't find the right words,which still kind of hits me every now and then,on a daily basis. but i went through differenttherapies.
and then, after a few months,i went to some group rehab therapies, both cognitiveand psychotherapy. because there's a lot of effectsthat come with brain injury, again, whether it'sa stroke or traumatic or whatever, things likedepression, things like anxiety, things like aggression,lack of filter. some people really losetheir social graces. if you've ever met someone who'shad a stroke and has had that particular impact, if it'sa frontal lobe injury, it
can impact your regulationcenter. so some people say inappropriatethings or do inappropriate things orthings like that. the other big one, that was ahuge surprise for me, was your initiation gets impactedchemically. so in that part of your brainwhere your executive skills are stored, that also storesyour get-up-and-go, your ability to initiate, yourability to start something. and so i struggled for a reallylong time as to why
this was happening to me. because i couldn't figure outwhy i wasn't back to the old maria, of doing 500 things andmaking things happen and being type a and being acontrol freak. and that was reallywhat was going on. so those group therapies reallyhelped with that. but it took about six or sevenmonths, which is actually quite fast given whathad happened to me. but i slowly started to get backinto work again and test
the waters. the challenge with a braininjury like mine is, because there's nothing physicalthat you see-- i mean, if you break your armor you break your foot, you know when it's healed, right? and you know there'sa problem. but how do know you're not asgood at prioritization anymore until you have to prioritize? so i had to get back into workjust to test the boundaries of
what was happening to me. and over the course of therecovery, that full year, as i was slowly getting back intowork and doing client work again and making sure i wasn'tscrewing up my accounting books or anything like that,and then even the last few years, i deal with thingsdifferently. i've learned to adapt to, whati call, the new me, because i had to learn to adapt tothings being different. and things that used tocome easy for me don't
come as easy for me. so my brain has towork harder. that also means that fatigueis a huge issue with brain injury patients and cansometimes last the whole rest of their lives. so i have to plan my weeks verycarefully and my days, because if i try to do too muchin one day, it literally exhausts me, because my brain'sworking harder to do things that used to be a littlebit more automatic than
they are now. so i tell you all this because,whether it's a brain aneurysm or whether it's adivorce or a death or a medical diagnosis, we all havesome major crisis at some point, unfortunately, that, likei mentioned before, yanks us out of our lives. and i was fortunate enough, withmy recovery, that i was able to see what happenedto me as a gift. i know there's a lot of otherpatients that i hear from that
are not as fortunate as i am. but i did learn to re-frame mylife and reboot my brain, which is why i call the book"rebooting my brain." because i was forced to. because i had to learn howto operate in a new way. and i learned some valuablelessons about what got me through that crisis that canapply to any crisis of you trying to get back onyour feet again. so i'm going to share thosewith you and read a couple
passages that illustratethose points. there's three major ones that,as i was writing the book, i started to realize wereimportant to getting back into your life again. and the first one is reallyall about patience. i am a redhead, andi'm also italian. i'm 100% italian. so patience is not somethingthat i'm really well versed in.
and being a type-a personality,i'd always equated patience as a verynegative thing, that maybe people didn't care enough ifthey were too patient. or they were just being lazyif they were trying to be patient and wait things out. and i was pretty much smackedin the face that i had to learn to be patient. and i wasn't going to go backto normal two weeks later, which is what i was tellingmy doctors as i'm in the
hospital, blind, with a shavedhead, with tubes in my head, going yeah, i'm going to getback to work in five weeks. i mean, all over my charts,they're like, she seems to not understand the severityof her injury. so i really had to learnthat lesson. and i'm going to read a quickpassage to you that exemplifies that. because my husband and i hadthis really great trip to spain planned, that happenedright when this aneurysm hit.
so, obviously, we didn't go, buti couldn't let go of the fact that we weren'tgoing to be going. so i'm just adapting thispassage for you. "during that crazy autumn in thehospital, i faced my first lesson with a teacher thatcame along and smacked me around quite oftenduring recovery-- patience. paul and i had spent early2008 planning a trip to northern spain.
our plan was to jet off tobilbao out for a romantic five-day road trip, headingsouth into the rioja region to spend the night at a charmingwinery bodega, then cruising east into the pyrenees forhiking in the mountains, and finally up to san sebastian,along the northern coast, for two days of seaside fun. the trip was scheduled forseptember 10, 2008, about five weeks after all hellbroke loose. i, however, was convinced wewere still going to get on
that plane and fly halfwayacross the globe. shaved, blind, frail, weak,underweight, fatigued, cognitively damaged, i stillbelieved we were going to be sunning ourselves in spain,munching on manchego, and sipping rioja. mind you, paul told me severaltimes that he'd canceled the trip, but i kept forgetting. i constantly said, don't forgetto ask the doctor if i can fly with the shuntin my head.
paul would sigh and have to tellme, again and again and watch me get angry,again and again. but we have to go, i pleaded. it'll help me heal, i cajoled. we're really not going tobe doing much walking. it'll be good forme, i reasoned. i wasn't even going to bereleased from the hospital until september 12, but i stillthought we were going. people who don't know the realme, the medical staff for
instance, thought thiswas merely my brain injury at play-- memory deficiencies,aggression, over-emotional outbursts. and it partly was. but i also have an insanelystubborn streak born of my italian heritage and my statusas a feisty redhead. patience is just notin my vocabulary. i was forced to learn that lifeis not on my timeline.
this brain injury was one glitchi was not going to be able to overcome with sheerdetermination and grit. this was serious business, andi had serious healing to do. for someone who is used tosimply making up her mind and getting things done, how was igoing to learn that i could not go from 0 to 100, orhospital bed to spanish beach, in 60 seconds? now, once again, i was put inmy place, when i tried to rally against something i couldnot control, simply by
willing it to be so. most likely, this delusion thati can control everything, combined with my inability tosurrender to things outside of that control, led to the damnaneurysm in the first place. i had to learn that thiswas more serious than i wanted to admit. several psychologists notedin my chart that they were concerned i didn't fullyappreciate the severity of my injury and that i wasoverestimating my current
abilities and recovery time. progress had to happenin small steps, not in giant leaps. i was going to have to set somegoals, yet focus on the immediate step in front of me inorder to make any progress. there had already been enoughsetbacks just while i was in the hospital, and there wouldbe more when i left. but patience, a virtue withwhich i've always struggled, finally had me by the throat.
and i was going to have tolisten if i wanted to pick up my life again. it dawned on me that this wasthe beginning of re-framing the way i lived my life if iwanted to have a life to live." so the second lesson that reallyhelped me get back on my feet was all aboutacceptance. and again, this is another wordthat i'd equated very negatively as compromise ornot getting what you want.
and i had to learn thatthere was a new me. i kept trying to get back to theold me and do things the way i used to do them before. and i was actually my own worstenemy, for a really long time, during this crisis,because i kept thinking the game was the same. and the game had changed, and ihad to accept that in order to overcome it. so i'm going to read a quickpassage to you about one of
the lessons in that. when i was home, and i wastrying to start to get used to working again, i literallycouldn't get up off the couch, and i couldn't understand why. i mean, i was still healing. i was still blind in one eye. it wasn't like i wascompletely healthy. but i couldn't understand, as iwas mentioning, this lack of initiation.
i couldn't understand why i justcouldn't get myself down to my desk and at least checkemail for 10 minutes a day. so we brought a speech therapistback in to help put me on a schedule andget me ready to get back to work again. and she really opened my eyesas to this fact that things were different now. and her name is jane. so i'm just reading aquick passage about
my work with her. "it was like the sun burstinto my cloudy day. i don't know if it was hereducation and experience with what was happening to me or herreassurance that what i was going through was normal,given my brain injury, but it helped me get past tryingto make sense of it all and just adapt. acceptance-- that lesson was key togetting me through
the rest of my recovery. before this, i had seeneverything as so black and white. if i say i'm brain injured,i won't ever get back to my life. so i'll minimize the injuryas much as possible and just push through. i had thought admitting tochange meant i was broken. what i learned from janewas that there was
going to be a new me-- not better or worse, but new. i could fight it all i wanted,but the sooner i accepted this new reality, the sooner i couldadapt and deal with it. acceptance doesn'tmean giving up. it's seeing the reality in frontof you and making the best out of the situation. to me, getting well had meantgetting back to the old baseline again.
not true. it was now a newplaying field. getting healthy meant that ineeded to honestly assess the obstacles and then see how far icould knock them over or how i could zip aroundthem instead. jane let some light into thatdarkness, so i could realize it was not about the old me. it was about the here and nowand making the new me work. working with her rebootedmy system and
my approach to recovery. this turning point, of askingfor help, completely rewired my thinking." and one of the things that youmay have gotten with your book is a card for a freetrial from a website called lumosity. it's a brain games websitedeveloped by a bunch of neuroscientists. it's actually basedin the bay area.
and jane actually turnedme on to that website. and playing those games, ithas been shown, they're finding, to help improve braininjury patients and stroke patients as well. so i played those gamesfor several weeks. and actually, it helped meget my vocabulary back. it helped me get my cognitiveedge back. and it helped me with recall,as well as things like visual-spatial recognition,which i was
having problems with. so it's a reallygreat website. and you have a card there for aone-month free trial if you want to check it out. so the third lesson, which is,i think, a really important one, no matter what challengewe're facing, is to find the humor. so you might think,ok, this is a near-fatal brain aneurysm.
there's nothing reallyfunny about that. but my family and friends, trueto form, found moments of humor to lighten their stressand lighten their mood and just cope. it's a human reaction, andpeople shouldn't feel guilty about making off-color jokes. i mean, my husband and i,between us, we joke a lot about brain injury andthings like that. and sometimes, we do it in frontof other people, and
they're kind of shocked. but that's how wedeal with it. so it's ok to let go and findthe humor in things. i think it really helps peopledeflate the pressure and be able to problem solve andthink more clearly. so there was actually a lot tolaugh about, even though i don't remember the entiremonth of august, 2008. my friend, who's a writer, whohappened to be in town, in seattle, the weekend that thishappened and extended her
stay, she started a journal forme, where she documented everything that wasgoing on in icu. and a few other people chimedin with entries. but she noted all these humorousmoments, even though they didn't know if these werethings that were going to last me the rest of my life. because of the drugs and becauseof the brain injury and because of being in icu, acommon side-effect is called icu psychosis.
and i don't know if any of haveactually had friends or family in the icu. but often people will come upwith conspiracy theories. they'll get paranoid. they'll think they're late formeetings they never had. they think there's thingsthey need to be doing that it's not true. they just start makingthings up. and so some of these stories,i was saying, were actually
pretty funny. and she documented some of them,hoping that one day we'd be able to laugh aboutit, which we do. but my husband, inparticular-- obviously, you can guess, hewas under a lot of stress. and he found his own way ofhumorously dealing with this situation, among other things. so i'm going to read youthis quick passage. "as the days passed, medicalstaff did daily neurological
assessments, sometimesmultiple times a day. they asked me a series ofquestions to see where i was, from a cognitive standpoint. while i could have conversationswhen i was alert and awake, i still didn'talways have a firm grasp on reality. but i think my friends andfamily enjoyed the barraged of questioning more than i did,especially my friend tracy, who wrote, 'they started a lotof testing and assessment for
future therapy. lots more questions followed. the first being, doesa cork float? i wasn't sure on this either. we just drink the wine. we don't bother puttingthe cork in water.' over the course of my hospitalstay, paul, along with everyone else, turned to humoras a coping mechanism. he invented his own batteryof memory tests.
that fall, two prominent menmade headlines, john edwards and brett favre. john edwards' scandal involveda secret affair. brett favre, the famous greenbay packers quarterback, went to play for the new york jets. as i'm a big football fan, thisbit of news mattered to me, because i loved brett favre,and i'm a jets fan. each day, paul asked me, do youremember what i told you about john edwards?
do you remember what i toldyou about brett favre? and each day i forgot. you know that movie, "50 firstdates" with drew barrymore and adam sandler, where each day hehas to woo his girlfriend all over again, becauseshe suffers from no short-term memory? yeah, it was kindof like that. shut up. no way, i would exclaim inshock, every single time.
never gets old, he joked. but paul's amusement masked anagging worry that i might be like this for therest of my life. in the vast blackness of a monthentirely lost to memory, i know there were glimpses ofthe old maria that offered hope and comfort to everyone,just as much as there were some scary setbacks. even in my ramblings, i itchedto be busy, telling people the location of things that ithought i needed from home--
i didn't-- or asking what i neededto be doing-- nothing. my mind reeled off an ambitiousto-do list on autopilot, even thoughnone existed. not all of it made sense, buteveryone took it as a good sign that i wanted tobe kicking ass and taking names again. especially carey, who wrote,'august 9, 2008.
we're trying to sort out agood pillow-bed position because of your neck pain. so you're getting jostledquite a bit. during one of the jostles,your gown slipped a bit. and you said, very distinctivelyto the nurse, well, shit, and yankedit back up. little victories, tiny friend,little victories,'" so i share those lessons withyou about patience, acceptance, and humor, again,because i'm hoping that you
don't have to have a brainaneurysm to be able to find opportunities in your everydayadversities to re-frame the conversation. i was forced to because ofwhat had happened to me. and like i said earlier, i'mfortunate enough to see this as a gift because of myamazing recovery. but a lot of these changes i'mreally glad that i've made, in terms of slowing down andappreciating the moment a little bit more and trying tocontrol my stress level.
because of that other aneurysmthat i have, that i mentioned, i do have to keep my bloodpressure in check so that it doesn't get any bigger. and i'm not perfect. i haven't reached some zenbuddhist state about my life. and i still get caughtup in things. i still work with crazy clientsand doing all sorts of stuff like that. but i try to stay a little bitcentered and a little bit
present, realizing that thereare worse things that could be happening to me right now. so i just want to leave you withone last passage, which is kind of about a lot ofthinking that i did because of the changes thathappened to me. again, it wasn't like ibecame a completely different person overnight. but there are a lot ofpersonality and emotional changes that happen to braininjury patients.
and so it led me on thisquestion of, do our brains define who we are? "i've been asked, do youthink your brain defines who you are? interesting question. i've learned that our brainfunction is responsible for not just our physical being buthow we plan, whether we're organized or not, how muchinitiative we have, and whether we get angry, sad,happy, or hopeful.
it conducts each instrumentthat makes up the grand orchestra of who we are. he's a go-getter. she's a neat-freak. she's good with numbers. he's such a spontaneous guy. all of these personality typesand traits that define us as human beings can be impactedby damage to our brains. if that happens, thenwho are we?
does brain function dictate yourpersonality or, if you believe personality is a partof your soul, then does that come first? and if it does come first, doesit dictate the way your brain learns to operate? i strongly believe that yourbrain function impacts your personality, but it doesn't haveto define who you are. my cognitive deficits andemotional changes threatened to change my very core, leavingparalyzing fear,
sadness, and frustrationin their wake. but the ability to fight throughthem, to keep trying to find a way around them, todeal with the tears by trying to find something to laugh at,that's all a very real part of who i was before the injury. these days, i realize that thisdesire to keep moving forward, to keep pushing throughis what makes me who i am, pre or post brain injury. as a result, the success orfailure of the attempt doesn't
really matter. my hope is twofold. first, that people take braininjury more seriously and understand what its effectscan be on those they know and love. and second, that it doesn'ttake a brain aneurysm for people to learn the lessons ilearned about slowing down, finding the humor, having morepatience, and savoring each activity in our 24 by7 connected world.
everyday challenges can presenta new opportunity to reboot, start over, and re-framethe conversation with your work, your relationships,and with yourself. it's not easy. and like me, you won't be greatat it every single day. but again, it's the attempt thatmatters the most, not the outcome." so i just want to leave you witha quote that i've found that kind of has given mecomfort through this journey.
and i'm going to paraphrase,because i-- short-term memory. i can't seem to rememberthe exact quote. and then we're going to takesome questions, if you guys have questions about braininjury or writing the book or anything like that. but there's a quote that i foundthat said something to the effect of, life's challengesare not meant to paralyze you.
they're supposed to showyou who you are. and i really believe that. i really believe that it'swhen we're tested-- and i know that sounds trite-- but that's when the realyou comes out, brain injury or not. and the real hearts of thosearound you come out as well. so i was very fortunate tohave a really supportive community of friends and familythat flew in from all
over the countryto be with me. but i know that there's a lotof brain injury patients who are abandoned bytheir families. their families don't understandthe personality changes or the psychologicalchanges that are taking place. and it's those people, many ofwhom i met in my rehab group, that are the reason that i wrotethis book, because more people need to understand whatthese effects of brain injury are, again, even if aperson looks fine.
so thanks for your time. and i will take any questions,if you guys have any. i'm pretty open, so youcan ask me anything. thanks. audience: [inaudible]. maria ross: i'm sorry? maria ross: i will, for sure. yes? audience: [inaudible]
would you say you're a happierperson now, with all these things you've learned, than youwere before your accident? maria ross: so the question was,do i think i'm a happier person now than i was beforebecause of all the things that i've learned? i have to admit, i waspretty happy before. but i think i'm justmore aware. and so it's made my life alittle bit more richer. i think i was always just going,going, going on the
treadmill and not reallyrealizing why i was going, before. i was just always looking forthe next job opportunity, the next career advancement, thenext activity i could participate in. and i wasn't really stoppinglong enough to consider why. and so now, because i have tobe more thoughtful about my day and my schedule and thethings that i choose to volunteer for or get draggedinto or whatever you want to
call it, i feel likei'm living with a little bit more intention. again, not every day, but i'mnot some yogi on the mat. so i guess, in that respect, i'ma little bit more present in my life now than i wasbefore, which, before, i probably would have said wasa bunch of psychobabble. but i kind of get it now. so thanks. any other questions you guyshave about brain injury or
anything like that? maria ross: so the question is,how have things have been like using this platformof education and inspiration of the book? is that kind of agood summary? audience: yeah. maria ross: it's actuallybeen really great. i still have my consultancyand my branding business. but i feel like this hasopened up a whole
other avenue for me. i'm actually going to bespeaking on a lot more medical conferences, representing thepatient point of view, not just about brain injurybut just about patient care in general. and i took this as anopportunity to go volunteer at the hospital thatsaved my life. when i was still in seattle, ibecame a patient adviser on the family and educationcommittee.
and basically, i was thevoice of reality. when they were trying to thinkof new programs and new training modules, i was like,yeah, that's too complicated. or yeah, they're not goingto be looking at that. so i've used that as anopportunity to be able to educate about brain injury. but i just think like, everybodyelse, i just wasn't really as aware. and i grew up in a house where,in high school, my
great aunt had suffereda stroke. and she was living with us. my mother was takingcare of her. and i had no idea what wasgoing on with her. i had no idea, at 14, why shehad become a different person. and i don't know if she actuallywas aware, as aware as i am, of what washappening to her. but you just hear the samestories over and over. and like i said, i keepgetting these emails.
and it doesn't really matterwhat the injury is. people are like, oh my god,i read your book. and i didn't have a brainaneurysm, but everything you described was like my story. and so just really understandingthese effects, because i alluded tothe fact about people in my group rehab. i remember one guy inparticular, which was so sad. his wife was divorcing himbecause she couldn't
understand why he was lazy nowand couldn't get his act together and was having such ahard time just getting back into his life and getting backto work after, i think, it was a car accident. and i remember when he finallywas educated about, these are the common effectsof brain injury. and he went down the listand went, yep, yep, yep. he's like, i'm going to takethis binder home and show it to my wife, because she thinksi'm making all this up.
which is just really sad to me,because i imagine it's got to be very hard tolive with that. i know it's been challengingfor my husband, at times. but at least he was willing to understand and educate himself. and i was very fortunateabout that. but when we talk about theconcussions, like that happened alex smith andwhatever, i'm so glad those guys are getting pulledout of the game.
because right around the timethat i had my brain aneurysm, there was a high schooler inseattle, named zack lystedt. i don't know if any of youguys have heard of him. but he got a concussion duringa game and was put back in-- or during practice. i can't remember. and he collapsed on the fieldand was taken to, actually, the same place thati was taken to, the same trauma center.
he's just learningto walk again. and this was four years ago. so, again, the diagnosis isnot, how many fingers am i holding up, and do youknow your name? because i was able to answerthose questions. but i don't even rememberanswering those questions. so i'm really happy to seethat that awareness is building up, with people takingbrain injury more seriously, that sometimes theeffects can't be seen.
but we need to be just reallycareful when we fall or get in a car accident or take ahit by the end zone. we really need to be morecognizant of that. sorry, i got on mysoapbox there. any other questions? do any of you guys have braininjury or stroke in your family or know anyone thatis brain injured? is it a stroke or? audience: it was an accident.
maria ross: an accident. so those are called traumaticbrain injuries, versus what i had is called an acquiredbrain injury, because it happened organically. but that's the thing withconcussion, is that tbis can cause aneurysms to form. and so, going back to thefootball thing, that's why, if they do have a concussion,it can cause a future brain aneurysm.
i don't know if any of thisresonates for you, with this person's behavior, but maybe. yeah? audience: yeah, my mother-in-lawactually had an aneurysm that ruptured,like, i think it was seven years ago. maria ross: did she survive? audience: yes. maria ross: oh, good.
audience: but it was similar,a lot of the things you talked about. [inaudible]. she collapsed in thebathroom, too. maria ross: everybody'sin the bathroom. i don't know why. it's weird. at least they're noton the road. audience: [inaudible] grandma,[inaudible].
she was showering, andthen [inaudible]. she was in the shower for,like, 40 minutes. she went up and checkedon her, and she was-- maria ross: oh my gosh. audience: --unconcious. she called the [inaudible]. i don't know. it makes me have a lot ofrespect for her recovery, because she is doingamazingly, too.
and she's [inaudible]. maria ross: yeah, and theinteresting thing, which is i never really had a stance abouthealth care reform. but we were very fortunate. my husband was working formicrosoft, and they covered everything, 100%. and our medical billswere well over half a million dollars. and i've talked to aneurysmgroups who didn't even know
about some of the rehabgroups after. because, since they didn't haveinsurance, they weren't going to be able to get intothose rehab groups. and yes, the doctor saving youractual life is important. but what gets you back intosociety again, as a productive member of society, isthe follow-up rehab. and that's where the care fallsdown, because a lot of insurance companies don't coverthe rehab, because they think it's a luxury, versus hey,at least let the person
take the full eight weeks. and then they can be backto work and back being productive. audience: yeah, because she justretired, but she would like to [inaudible]. maria ross: that's good. audience: she definitely[inaudible]. i mean, my mom does too. maria ross: well, i can'texplain it anymore.
it's not that i can't do thingsi didn't do before, necessarily. i used to be really, reallygood at project planning. i was queen of that. i organized an 80-city globalroadshow in one of my technology jobs before. the thought of actually seeing ablank spreadsheet right now, and organizing a project likethat, with multiple tabs, just makes my head spin.
i wouldn't even know. i get really overwhelmed. that's a big effectthat hits a lot of brain injury patients. as i was mentioning, thatfilter gets damaged. and so in the book, i have anexample of, it's like the bouncer of my brain wasreally good before. and now he got replaced withsomeone who's brand new. and he just lets everythingin at the same time.
so for example, in this group,we're completely focused. and i can talk to you guys. if there was another meetinggoing on over there, it's hard for me to filter outwhat's going on. so things like that justrequire more effort. so i'd have to spend more efforttrying to focus on this it hits me in restaurantsall the time. and stroke victims and aneurysmpatients always talk about this, that they havea really hard time with
filtering out conversations ina restaurant, because your brain's taking everything in theequal weight, because your filter is broken. and it leaves you exhausted,because if you can imagine taking everything in at thesame time, you're chugging really hard to try to stayfocused on the person that you're talking to. and that can exhaustyou after an hour. so no texting andtalking for me.
i try not to. breaking a leg, where it'sobvious [inaudible]. maria ross: that's reallygood question, actually. so the question was, sincethere's a lot of unseen effects, did i come up withstrategies to tell people that i might be struggling? is that where you'regoing with that? so it's just funny that youchose to use the word "strategies," because that'sthe big word in rehab is
coming up with strategies todeal with your issues. and they use that wordall the time. but yeah, i mean, it was kindof challenging for me at first, because i didn't know howmuch of it to bring into my business. i don't want to be a brandconsultant to $30 million companies and say like, oh,i forget stuff sometimes. so i have found ways towork around that. this sounds silly, buti write down a lot
more than i used to. so i'm always taking notes,or i'm always recording. and even today, ihave my notes. so i'm always writing stuffdown, whereas before, i didn't have to. so that's not necessarilysomething that people would notice. but sometimes i will ask thesame question twice in one conversation, because i'veforgotten what the answer was.
so it hasn't caused toomuch of an issue. and most of the partners thati work with on projects know about my situation. so i tend to rely on them. if we're having a conferencecall, i'll make sure i'm taking notes, and somebody elseis taking notes so that, if i missed something or ididn't understand something, they have my back. but it hasn't been a situationwhere people have
been mean about it. but i don't necessarilygo like, hi, i want your business. and i had a brain injury. i don't lead with that. but if they go to my website,they'll know that i'm an author and that i'vewritten this book. and ironically, bringing thatinto my brand, as a business, has actually really helpedmy business because it
differentiates me,in a weird way. but they also just see thisstory of overcoming adversity, and they feel like, well, that'skind of a person that i want to work with, whichi was surprised. i wasn't sure how people we'regoing to respond to that. i joke with my husband. i call it, playing the braininjury card, about if something goes wrong. i've never not deliveredsomething for a client and
blamed it on my brain injuryor anything like that. but there have been a couplethings that, literally, is because of my overwhelmproblem or whatever. and i've just found away to deal with it. i double check everything. i turn off my email, while i'mtrying to work on something with people. so those are the kindsof strategies that i've tried to employ.
but yeah, there's only been oneor two times where i've told somebody, you have to slowdown, because i have to write this down, becausei had a brain injury. because then that invitesa whole bunch of other questions, right? it's like, oh, what's that? and when did that happen? you're like, no, i'm just tryingto get the information down right now.
so good question, though. anyone else? no? well, thanks for yourtime today. and i hope you enjoy the book.
